Quotes by British Authors - Page 208

And so this is Christmas...what have you done?
John Lennon
It's easy to forget that life is the greatest gift of all
Karli Perrin
I have always thought of Christmastime, when it has come round...as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.
Charles Dickens
They shared an image of the American Christmas--riches, reconciliations, tears, snow, success, sentiment, furs and firs, the shop windows shining like Heaven and everything good for sale.
Alice Thomas Ellis
. . to cook well and with imagination you have to be in a cheerful and contented frame of mind, and thus inclined to be generous.
Alice Thomas Ellis
I once bought my kids a set of batteries for Christmas with a a note on it saying, toys not included.
Bernard Manning
Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in life and take things for granted.
Karli Perrin
But old Christmas smiled as he laid this cruel-seeming spell on the out-door world, for he meant to light up the home with new brightness, to deepen all the richness of in-door colour, and give a keener edge of delight to the warm fragrance of food: he meant to prepare a sweet imprisonment that would strengthen the primitive fellowship of kindred,and make the sunshine of familiar human faces as welcome as the hidden day-star. His kindness fell but hardly on the homeless--fell but hardly on the homes where the hearth was not very warm, and where the food had little fragrance, where the human faces had no sunshine in them,but rather the leaden, blank-eyed gaze of unexpectant want. But the fine old season meant well; and if he has not learnt the secret how to bless men impartially, it is because his father Time, with unrelenting purpose, still hides that secret in his own mighty, slow-beating heart.
George Eliot
Patsy had asked him if he had had adventures in Paris and he had truthfully answered no. It was a fact that he had done nothing; his father thought he had had a devil of a time and was afraid he had contracted a venereal disease, and he hadn't even had a woman; only one thing had happened to him, it was rather curious when you came to think of it, and he didn't just then quite know what to do about it: the bottom had fallen out of his world.
W Somerset Maugham
Another Christmas PoemBlood Christmas, here again.Let us raise a loving cup:Peace on earth, goodwill to men,And make them do the washing-up.
Wendy Cope
The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.
Charles Dickens
You wanted a peaceful, comfortable Christmas, with all reminders of poverty, injustice, or other people's griefs well out of sight, so as not to disturb your pleasure. That isn't what Christmas is about, Wallace. Christmas is about offering hope to all people, not just those like ourselves. Christmas is about everyone: rich or poor, friend or stranger. The moment you exclude anyone, you exclude yourself.
Anne Perry
Christmas comes but once a year, starts in August ends in July
Benny Bellamacina
There is at Christmas time a great deal of hypocrisy, honourable hypocrisy, hypocrisy undertaken pour le bon motif, c'est entendu, but nevertheless hypocrisy!
Agatha Christie
I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.
Charles Dickens
It was a pretty sight, and a seasonable one, that met their eyes when they flung the door open. In the fore-court, lit by the dim rays of a horn lantern, some eight or ten little field-mice stood in a semicircle, red worsted comforters round their throats, their fore-paws thrust deep into their pockets, their feet jigging for warmth. With bright beady eyes they glanced shyly at each other, sniggering a little, sniffing and applying coat-sleeves a good deal. As the door opened, one of the elder ones that carried the lantern was just saying, "Now then, one, two, three!" and forthwith their shrill little voices uprose on the air, singing one of the old-time carols that their forefathers composed in fields that were fallow and held by frost, or when snow-bound in chimney corners, and handed down to be sung in the miry street to lamp-lit windows at Yule-time.
Kenneth Grahame
Just been poisoned by my gran. Nothing says Christmas better than familicide and anaphylactic shock.
R.D. Ronald
How old did someone have to be before they could be put to use to make tea?
Jenny Oliver
This faulty light fitting at the front door with the dangerously flickering bulb looks rather festive. Who says I don't do Christmas?
R.D. Ronald
I actually hate Christmas," says Eileen. "Everybody has this idea you have to have a good time, like happiness comes in a ruddy packet." Her face is flushed with heat. "One time, I stayed in bed all day. That was one of my best Christmases.
Rachel Joyce
There must be something ghostly in the air of Christmas — something about the close, muggy atmosphere that draws up the ghosts, like the dampness of the summer rains brings out the frogs and snails.
Jerome K. Jerome
For this was Christmas, which had always been a time of magic, to him and to all the world.
Susan Cooper
There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew. "Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, Uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!" Fred, A Christmas Carol.
Charles Dickens
Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in!‘I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!’ Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. ‘The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Jacob Marley! Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this.’” “Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset.” “And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!
Charles Dickens
It's supposed to be jolly, with mistletoe and holly... and other things ending in olly.
Terry Pratchett
All ceremony depends on symbol; and all symbols have been vulgarized and made stale by the commercial conditions of our time...Of all these faded and falsified symbols, the most melancholy example is the ancient symbol of the flame. In every civilized age and country, it has been a natural thing to talk of some great festival on which "the town was illuminated." There is no meaning nowadays in saying the town was illuminated...The whole town is illuminated already, but not for noble things. It is illuminated solely to insist on the immense importance of trivial and material things, blazoned from motives entirely mercenary...It has not destroyed the difference between light and darkness, but it has allowed the lesser light to put out the greater...Our streets are in a permanent dazzle, and our minds in a permanent darkness.
G.K. Chesterton
This is the way the wheel turns, coming at last to full circle, with wild as well as tame at he crib; lion and turtle-dove together an barnyard beasts lying down with the fox. For wild and tame are but two hlaves and here, where all begins and ends, everything must be whole.And always, among the sleepers, there must be somebody waking - somewhere, someone, waking and watchful. Or what would happen to the world..?
P.L. Travers
The singing grew louder as they approached the church. It made Harry’s throat constrict, it reminded him so forcefully of Hogwarts, of Peeves bellowing rude versions of carols from inside suits of armour, of the Great Hall’s twelve Christmas trees, of Dumbledore wearing a bonnet he had won in a cracker, of Ron in a hand-knitted sweater…
J.K. Rowling
And families now, families who have been separated throughout the year, assemble once more together. Now under these conditions, my friend, you must admit that there will occur a great amount of strain. People who do not feel amiable are putting great pressure on themselves to appear amiable! There is at Christmas time a great deal of hypocrisy, honourable hypocrisy, hypocrisy undertaken pour le bon motif, c'est entendu, but nevertheless hypocrisy.
Agatha Christie
Anyone could see the ticker tape. It was more frightening than the that never stopped calculating the national debt. This one said '27 SHOPPING DAYS TO CHRISTMAS'.It might as well have said '27 DAYS TO ARMAGEDDON'.
Jeanette Winterson
It was dusk and the light had an ultra-violet quality to it, a final burst of pigmentation as night and day rushed at each other in a clash of colour prisms before darkness finnaly, inevitably won out.
Karen Swan
Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused— in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened— by the recurrence of Christmas.
Charles Dickens
Odd that a festival to celebrate the most austere of births should end up being all about conspicuous consumption.
Jeanette Winterson
Twas a cold Yuletide evening, and I wandered the stacks, shelving multiple titles that the patrons brought back. We toiled overtime at our library here, 'cause the powers that be cut our staffing this year.
David Davis
Oh! lovely voices of the skyWhich hymned the Saviour's birth,Are ye not singing still on high,Ye that sang, "Peace on earth"?
Felicia Hemans
So on Christmas morning I was up at five o'clock, making the fire as bright as a furnace, baking minc'd pies and boiling plum puddings the size of Medici cannonballs, and setting three sides of roast beef to turn on the spits. Soon I breathed again that steam that tells the soul it is Christmas, and all the year' work done, and time for feasting; the smell of oranges, sugarplums and cloves, all mingled with roasting meats.
Martine Bailey
Nick chided a censor, who wished some books gone, and suggested she scan Fahrenheit 451. For the book-budget cutters, Old Claus had no plan, cause if they could read, they just read Ayn Rand.
David Davis
Christmas is a time for families.
Dorothy Koomson
Sometimes in the company of others I find a disagreeable spirit of competitiveness kicks in and each person is shamed into spending rather more than he would have wished. This is a historically established syndrome, of course. One Magus going to Bethlehem would probably have sprung for a box of After Eights. Three Magi on the same trip found themselves laden with gold, frankincense and myrrh and bitterly comtemplating their overdrafts.
James Hamilton-Paterson
There are some wonderful aspects to Christmas. It's magical. And each year, from at least November, well, September, well, if I'm honest, May, I look forward to it hugely.
Miranda Hart
A Christmas gambol oft could cheerThe poor man's heart through half the year.
Walter Scott
For the rest, silence or good music, not much food, a lot of solitude, walks on the Heath, the time to think while others... well, often fall apart. Not so bad, not so bad at all. Being queer and self-sufficient is the best present at this season.
Will Self
The Church does not superstitiously observe days, merely as days, but as memorials of important facts. Christmas might be kept as well upon one day of the year as another; but there should be a stated day for commemorating the birth of our Saviour, because there is danger that what may be done on any day, will be neglected.
Samuel Johnson
Christmas is a time in which, of all times in the year, the memory of every remediable sorrow, wrong, and trouble in the world around us, should be active with us, not less than our own experiences, for all good.
Charles Dickens
Fail not to call to mind, in the course of the twenty-fifth of this month, that the Divinest Heart that ever walked the earth was born on that day; and then smile and enjoy yourselves for the rest of it; for mirth is also of Heaven's making.
Leigh Hunt
Christmas works like glue, it keeps us all sticking together.
Rosie Thomas
Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!
Charles Dickens
Good for Christmas-time is the ruddy colour of the cloak in which--the tree making a forest of itself for her to trip through, with her basket--Little Red Riding-Hood comes to me one Christmas Eve to give me information of the cruelty and treachery of that dissembling Wolf who ate her grandmother, without making any impression on his appetite, and then ate her, after making that ferocious joke about his teeth. She was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding-Hood, I should have known perfect bliss. But, it was not to be; and there was nothing for it but to look out the Wolf in the Noah's Ark there, and put him late in the procession on the table, as a monster who was to be degraded.
Charles Dickens
Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.
W.H. Auden
Remember, if Christmas isn't found in your heart, you won't find it under a tree.
Charlotte Carpenter
At ChristmasA man is at his finest towards the finish of the year;He is almost what he should be when the Christmas season's here;Then he's thinking more of others than he's thought the months before,And the laughter of his children is a joy worth toiling for.He is less a selfish creature than at any other time;When the Christmas spirit rules him he comes close to the sublime.
Edgar A. Guest
And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s content. “As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.
Charles Dickens
Christmas it seems to me is a necessary festival; we require a season when we can regret all the flaws in our human relationships: it is the feast of failure, sad but consoling.
Graham Greene
Christmas! The very word brings joy to our hearts. No matter how we may dread the rush, the long Christmas lists for gifts and cards to be bought and given--when Christmas Day comes there is still the same warm feeling we had as children, the same warmth that enfolds our hearts and our homes.
Joan Winmill Brown
Christmas is a day of meaning and traditions, a special day spent in the warm circle of family and friends.
Margaret Thatcher
They are Man's and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance and this girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.
Charles Dickens
When we recall Christmas past, we usually find that the simplest things - not the great occasions - give off the greatest glow of happiness.
Bob Hope
Always winter but never Christmas.
C.S. Lewis
I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
Charles Dickens
My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others. Come to think of it, why do we have to wait for Christmas to do that?
Bob Hope